Amusing Ourselves to Death-Neil Postman

I am a communications major, and this has led me to be introduced to a wide array of communications theories throughout my college career. In that time, I had heard the author of this book's name thrown around many times. Neil Postman was a famous media theorist and critic who was extremely critical of the advent and popularization of television, adopting the ideas of technological determinism (the belief that the popular medium in which messages are distributed determines a society's cultural values).

Neil Postman

In Amusing Ourselves to Death, Postman argues that television becoming the dominant medium of information in our society has caused us to become obsessed with entertainment. All information presented through television, he asserts, is skewed to entertain us first, thereby making it nearly impossible for people to prioritize being entertained in all aspects of our life. He believes this has major consequences to us as a society and will lead to the downfall of education, politics, and other important institutions.

I couldn't help but think of this class as I read this book. In Postman's time, television was definitely to dominant medium, but the dominant medium today is definitely the internet. While I think his views are too extreme in regards to how much popular media influences our behavior, it made me wonder how much of our thinking is structured by the internet. Additionally, if television skews everything it presents towards entertainment, what is the internet's skew? I think social media especially tends to present things as entertainment, but I also think the internet in general causes us to search for brevity instead of long-form messages in all areas of our life. Overall, I definitely don't agree with Postman on most of his points, but he made me reconsider how popular technology shapes our culture.

What do you guys think about the effects of the internet on our society? Does it really change us drastically like Postman asserts, or is it more subtle? Let me know below!

Comments

  1. UnknownNovember 15, 2018 at 4:01 AM

    I've read this as well, for COM417, and I agree that his views are pretty extreme and I don't really agree with him either. That being said, he makes a few good points. I don't think media such as the internet changes us drastically, but it definitely does change how we think and go about our lives. In regards to social media, there are several studies that argue the pros and cons, but I believe it comes down to the person and not the media. I can see what Postman means when he says all media has a bias, but really it comes down to how people themselves use the media and not the actual platform itself.

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  2. UnknownNovember 27, 2018 at 2:18 PM

    This book. While a lot of what Postman says is extreme I agree to some of it. TV has changed things a lot, but I don't know if it is to the extreme of shaping our whole life as entertainment. The internet is a little different in my point of view. I think the internet and especially social media has changed a lot about us as people. We are always trying to paint this glamorous picture of perfect lives and out do the next person. Most every thing we do from a social media standpoint is for entertainment, and in my opinion social media is consuming the lives of the younger generation making this have the biggest effect on them.

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